MASS EFFECT: UNVEILING
by Morticutor
Summary: Brief story rewriting Shepherd's time with the Leviathan from the same named DLC to change the Reaper's origins to something else. Related to noodlings I have for the RPG campaign I need to run. Alexia is not necessarily Shepherd.


RISE TO CONSCIOUSNESS, LITTLE CREATURE.

Alexia groaned as consciousness flowed enough to remind her of the dull ache and sticky patch on the back of her head. Not helped by the slow drip of stickiness collecting inside the collar of her hardsuit. She was still inside the deep sea ATLAS, so far down the only light she could see came from jellyfish analogues puffing past her cockpit.

The instruction had come from inside her brain carried by a deep bass like the background rumble of the Universe itself.

'Ohhhh, what happened?' She was asking herself more than the voice that she wasn't entirely sure was real. _Let's see, power is good, air reserves full, too far underwater to get a signal without a booster –_

YOU CAME AS DIRECTED. AS SUMMONED.

'Summoned? By you?' She tried not to feel a little ridiculous as her words sounded comparatively small and weak inside her little bubble of air.

YES.

'I don't see you' she said, squinting past the frankly pointless beams of her suit's lights. 'If you summoned me, then at least show yourself.'

There was a moment of quiet as if the voice wasn't sure, but then her cockpit was flooded with bio-luminescence as lights rose up from below. She gasped, struggling to make out anything past the glare beyond the tapered shape and limbs of a Reaper's massive hull. A massive light-rimmed eye -organic, as far as she could tell from the multiple pupils - etched out in light blue glow dwarfed her canopy.

I AM HERE.

'So I see. And why am I here? Why did you say that you summoned me?'

BECAUSE I DID. I REACHED OUT AND YOU CAME AS DEMANDED.

'That's a mighty big thing to claim. And not a little scary. You could have just asked.'

LOOK AT YOU. I SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU, LIMITED AND MORTAL AS YOU ARE. YOU ARE NOT EVEN COMPLEX TO ME.

To herself: 'right. Thanks for the pep talk'. Then, at a normal level 'so why would you need little old me?' She felt a little silly talking out loud, but even without sound the voice was deafening.

YOU KNOW THE REAPERS. YOU FIGHT THE REAPERS. YOU EVEN WIN. THE EL-AXIA GIFTED THEIR VOICE TO YOU.

'Well, that's one way of putting it. What, did you say El-Axia? You mean the Protheans?

YOU CALLED THEM PROTHEANS. THEY HAD THEIR OWN WORD FOR THEMSELVES. WE CALLED THEM SOMETHING ELSE STILL.

'Fair enough. But you still called Reapers, Reapers? Are you messing with me now?

IT IS AN ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF THEM.

'Point.'

YOU ENDED SOVEREIGN.

'I couldn't have done it on my own. I had my crew, not to mention the Prothean knowledge in me.'

YES. YOU STAND ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS.

Alexia felt like she was falling backwards, but her feet were planted firmly on the - ground? She wasn't in the ATLAS any more, water lapped at her boots. There was no sky, no light source, just her standing on top of an ocean that stretched out infinitely.

 _This definitely makes my top five weird things of all time list._

Kaiden came out of nowhere, looking grim.

'Kaiden, I –'

'It is easier to talk this way.

'Oh.'

'We were the first. We grew and evolved on membranes of dark matter, our hearts flowed with nuclear ichor when the Universe was still solidifying. The powers you think of as biotics came to us as easily as will. With our thoughts we could reach out across the galaxy.

'You would call us gods. Though we were not that wise.'

'Eventually the galaxy condensed. Most of it stayed barren, but some flourished. The odds of organic life are not high, but when atoms play this way and the correct carbons flow, it happens. And life is tenacious. Mllennia-old deserts can become green after one rainstorm, seas can fill after just one seed meteor. You were small and separate, you confused our being with apotheosis. You worshipped us and we accepted in our fever dreams of pretend unity.

'It did not work. Generation after generation of failure, of purgation. Your minds were too small, you were too small, to cope with us without becoming dominated by our wills. Useless to yourselves and us.

'So we retreated. Occasionally minds reached us in our slumber and we enjoyed their contact, but most could not cope. We watched as civilisations were dreamed into being, to fall in one way or another. But life, life hung on.

Alexia shook her head. 'Wait, are you saying that's why you created the Reapers? As some kind of galactic gardener, to prune dying civilisations? To give new ones a chance?

Not-Kaiden stared at her and walked off, angrily stiff.

'No'. Alexia had missed Liara's soft voice, often late at night.

'We retreated to the galactic core, where we would be left alone. But there we found them – the Reapers.

'So they came from the core? No wonder they hid the Collectors there'

Liara shook her head. 'No, you need to listen. Alexia, they attacked us and when we took one apart and examined it, we found that – well, we found something impossible. They were strong, but we were the first and the strongest. They were still powerful though, so many of us died to them. And that was the worst part. They took us apart and rebuilt themselves in our image, with our power.'

'You said something about them was impossible?' Alexia was trying not to match Liara's eyes. Everything about her was just as she remembered, but the eyes…

Liara turned and fled. Alexia stood confused, wondering if she had said or thought something wrong, but then she saw Wrex stomping towards her.

'We were the oldest thing alive.' He waved his stubby arms in emphasis. 'We were born in nuclear fire, seeing the interstitial potential of everything. But they were older than us. Individually they weren't a threat, but together they were beating us. And there were more of them. Then they became us. The tide turned, The currents flowed their way.'

'So they weren't alive? They were machines?' Alexia felt like she was on a cliff – edge, that too many wrong guesses and she wouldn't be worth the creature's effort but this was too important not to understand.

The Krogan turned his head so he could fix her with one angry eye. 'No, not quite, but at least you are trying. They were older than us, older this entire universe. They came from the black holes at the galactic core, maybe even through them, but they were not born under the rules of this reality.'

A new voice came in.

'That's why they're so hard to penetrate with standard munitions, why they continue when anything else would be finished. They're not even made from the same matter. That's why they're so alien, they grew in a universe of different rules, evolutionary pressures.'

Alexia knew without looking, the Salarian scientist. Turning back, the Krogan had gone.

'That's why they care so little for us. They have nothing in common, no brotherhood to appeal to. We at least come from the same galactic neighbourhood. Even a Rachni Queen makes sense simply through proximity. These, we have nothing for them but ourselves, what we are.

This time Alexia keep quiet and paid attention, though her head was throbbing hard by now.

'You know what they do, why they have their name, but their goal we still don't understand. Is it control? They insist we only survive at their leisure. Is it, as you say, gardening? Pruning to allow new races to flourish? Why spend millions of years on this one activity, this periodic housecleaning? So they can dominate it, grow it in a certain direction? Is this some sort of slow terraforming? No, that word is too small. Galactoforming? Well, that just sounds ungainly. Also requires more evidence, even circumstantial evidence lacks force.

'You said that you took them apart, examined them' Alexia started. 'Didn't you find your answer there?'

'Sadly no.' The Salarian paced around her, agitated. We explored some of their physicality their neural structures, but after that – after they took from us, they changed so much. Their tactics, their behaviours – they learned from us.

After that they were very careful never to fall into our' he looks wryly at his hands 'appendages - again. They became angrier, more brutal. More organised.'

For a moment, everything went blank. Alexia blinked and found herself back in the ATLAS, her hardsuit monitors complaining. The giant eye had retreated so far back she could see the vague outline of the whole thing. It was massive, with too many legs. Something splashed on the console and when she put her glove to her nose it came away bright red.

FRAGILE. GO NOW OR END.

A familiar bluish sheen passed over the form and her ATLAS rose without command.

'The mass effect bubble carried her to the surface, though Alexia was barely conscious when the team brought her aboard.

'So that's what happened. I hope it was worth it. All the logs show is some giant, Reaper-looking thing staring at her for ten minutes until it sent her back, so we'll have to wait until she wakes up. You'll call me at the first sign of improvement, right? Great, doc. Look after her. I'm going to see about getting us the hell out of here.


End file.
